by Sharon Shinn
Leah glanced around. “I have something upstairs. A wooden skeleton. I thought it would be perfect for some hunti collector with a macabre turn of mind.”
“Now that I’d like to see,” Zoe said.
“Annova’s upstairs,” Virrie said, tugging Zoe toward the back door. “Let’s ask her to show it to us.”
Leah turned to Mally as soon as the women were out of sight. “Well, let’s move the tree to the hunti section and then see what else we can do there. I like the tall basket with all the canes in different kinds of wood.”
“The striped one is my favorite.”
“Isn’t that one nice? Or the one of very dark wood. It’s harder than metal, I think. Oh, and did you see the necklace that arrived yesterday? It’s made of silver, but it looks like little branches woven together. Definitely hunti.”
Mally and Leah had just started rearranging items on the hunti table when the front door opened and a gust of cool air swirled in. Leah looked up, expecting to see Yori or one of Darien’s guards, but the man who stepped inside was a stranger.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a smile, “the shop isn’t open yet.”
He didn’t answer, merely looked around. He was wiry, thin, of medium build; he seemed to lean forward a little, balancing on his toes, as if preparing to make a sudden leap or to dash out the door. His clothes were dark and nondescript, a little too big on him. Chandran had taught Leah early on that a visitor wearing loose clothing was often a thief who tried to casually slip merchandise into his oversize pockets.
Her hand closed over the smooth, round head of one of the hunti canes. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, this time without the smile. “We’re not open. You’ll need to leave.”
He gave her one long hard stare, as if trying to gauge her strength and swiftness, and clearly decided she wasn’t much of a threat. He pivoted toward the nearest shelving unit and starting scooping up merchandise. A bag of semiprecious stones, a bowl of hammered gold, an inexpensive stone figurine.
Leah slid the cane free from the basket. “Run upstairs,” she ordered Mally in a low voice. Then she charged across the shop, yelling,“Get out of here! Get out!”
Lifting the cane over her head, she swung it down on his shoulder. He oofed with pain and spun back to confront her, his hands raised to fend her off. She swung again, changing her angle, hitting him hard directly under his left rib cage. He grabbed at the cane before she could raise it again, yanking so hard he almost pulled her off her feet. So she went with the momentum, stabbing her weapon forward like a sword, driving the tip deep into the middle of his chest. He grunted and let go. She batted at his head and shoulders, but his hands were raised and she could tell she didn’t do any real damage.
“Get out of here!” she shouted again.
Suddenly he jumped forward, knocking her hand aside, sending the cane skipping across the floor. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her so brutally she thought her head might snap off. She kicked him between the legs, not connecting as hard as she wanted to, but enough to make him hiss a curse. He tightened his grip on her shoulders, then shoved her violently away from him.
She stumbled into the shelving unit and felt the whole thing tremble as if it might topple over. She clutched at one of the racks, trying to catch her balance, and sensed a shift in the weight of some of the storage boxes. She flung up her hand to protect her face just as rocks started raining down from the topmost shelf. Big and small, rough and polished, dozens of them, pelting the intruder as if aimed by a marksman. He cried out and put his own hands up, but Leah could already see red marks forming on his cheeks and wrist. He hunched his shoulders and bent double, trying to scrabble for safety. But his foot slipped on one of the smooth, marble-size rocks, and he crashed to the floor in a great clatter of flesh and stone.
Leah snatched up the cane again, but she didn’t need it. Two royal guards tore in through the front door, and the three women came bounding down from upstairs. Everyone was crying, What happened? Are you all right? though the guards were also efficiently tying up the intruder while they inquired after everyone’s well-being.
“Mally!” Leah gasped and spun around, but Virrie had the little girl close in her arms. Everybody else looked fine, just agog with curiosity.
“What happened?” Zoe demanded.
Leah put her hand to her chest, suddenly aware that her heart was pounding. “He—that man—came in off the street and started putting things in his pockets,” she said breathlessly. “I told Mally to run, and I started hitting him with a cane. He threw me against the display unit and a whole box of rocks came down on top of him.” She nodded down at the soldiers. “I was certainly glad to see you arrive.”
One of them looked up. His face was friendly but rueful. “Escorting the prime,” he said. “We were outside and saw this man come in, but we didn’t realize he would cause trouble. Until we saw you fighting.”
Annova bustled over to take Leah’s face between her hands. “Did he hit you? Are you hurt?”
Leah rubbed her shoulder. “He grabbed me—here—I might have bruises. Otherwise, I’m fine.”
“The regent will want to talk to him,” one of the soldiers said, hauling the intruder to his feet. The man scowled down at his shoes and wouldn’t look at any of them.
Virrie raised her eyebrows. “Why would Darien want to talk to a common thief?”
The soldier looked apologetic. “Because he might have harmed the prime,” he said.
Zoe glanced at Leah, then back at Virrie. “Or the princess.”
“But she’s not—” Virrie hugged Mally closer and didn’t finish the sentence.
“I think he was just stealing,” Leah said.
The soldier nodded. “Probably. But the regent will want to talk to him even so.” A few minutes later, the guards had hustled the thief out the door.
“You must hate that,” Leah said, turning back to look at Zoe. Annova was already on her knees, cleaning up. A glass vase was broken and a wooden figurine looked like it had been damaged beyond salability, but the worst of the mess was just the spatter of stones. Mally squirmed out of Virrie’s hold so she could crouch beside Annova and start gathering them up. “Knowing that you’re always being watched so closely by royal soldiers.”
“It is an affront to my carefree coru heart,” Zoe agreed. “And yet people I love have been saved more than once by the vigilance of Darien’s guards. And after I had Celia—well—I stopped caring so much about my own independence and more about her absolute safety. So I have learned to live with the shadow of constant supervision.”
“Well, I’m glad they were following you today!” Leah exclaimed. “I thought I could fight him off, but he was stronger than he looked.”
“You should have screamed for help. We would have been down here in seconds,” Virrie scolded.
Leah could not help her look of disbelief. “Two old women—and the coru prime? To join a brawl? I don’t think so.”
“I’m not that old,” Virrie said.
“I am,” Annova said, looking up from the floor, “but I fight dirty.”
“And the coru prime is very handy in a fight,” Zoe said cheerfully. “I could have made all the blood rush to his head and rendered him unconscious in a moment.”
“So we didn’t really need the guards,” Leah said.
“Exactly. But I do like Darien to think he’s being useful.”
“Well, let’s get this all cleaned up,” Leah said. “And then—how about lunch?”
• • •
The next nineday unfolded in a similar manner, though the temperature was decidedly colder and the wet weather much more unpleasant. Rhan didn’t drop by. No one tried to rob the shop. But Leah was starting to find a rhythm to her days and she liked that. It would be completely disrupted when she opened her doors and began dealing with customers, but then she would
find a new rhythm. She was looking forward to it.
She and Annova were alone in the shop late on eighthday when a delivery cart drew up out front and the driver began carrying in crates. Maybe a dozen, most of them quite large.
“What’s all this?” Annova demanded.
But Leah had seen the firm, well-formed handwriting on the shipping manifest, and she felt a pulse of excitement. “It’s from my merchant friend in Malinqua,” she said. “This is the stuff that will set our shop apart.”
“Then I can’t wait to see it.”
Leah tipped the driver extravagantly and locked the door behind him, not wanting anyone else to stroll in while they were distracted by opulence. Annova was already prying the lid off the first crate. “It smells good, at any rate,” she said.
Leah had expected Chandran to provide her with a diverse and high-quality selection of goods, but he had outdone himself. One crate contained mostly foodstuffs—dried lassenberries from Cozique, seed-wax cakes from Dhonsho, keerza leaves and lovely pots for brewing them in from Malinqua. Another held primarily artwork—Berringese sculptures, Dhonshon masks, paintings from the Karkades. Several were filled with clothing, everything from simple, subtle Coziquela dresses to formal Malinquese jackets to embroidered ladies’ gloves from an island Leah had never heard of. There was even an assortment of turbans from Berringey.
But what Leah was most interested in unwrapping, what she was certain Chandran would have included, were the bright, gorgeous fabrics of Dhonsho. Sure enough, the fifth crate they opened practically burst with color. “Oh!” Annova exclaimed, reverently lifting out layer after layer of cloth. Some were bolts of loose fabrics dyed in complex patterns; others were finished pieces such as skirts, shawls, and tunics. Each one was more beautiful than the last.
Annova could hardly bring herself to put any of them down; she kept laying pieces across her lap, as if to look at them more closely later, and then crooning over the next one she gently slipped out of the box.
“You know you can have anything you want,” Leah told her. “All of these things were bought with Darien’s money. He’d figure it’s just part of your paycheck.”
Annova had found a long, filmy scarf woven from strands of blue and green and gold, and hung with jangling charms shaped like shells and starfish. “Look at this,” Annova said, wrapping it twice around her head, throwing the long ends over her shoulders. The colors were vibrant and cheerful against her dark skin. “Even the ugliest woman would be pretty in something like this.”
“Well, you’re not an ugly woman, but consider it yours,” Leah replied.
Annova’s fingers came up and played with the edges that lay against her cheeks. “My mother had a scarf like this—almost the same colors—she said it had belonged to her mother,” she said. “It was one of the few things I kept when Calvin and I were living on the river. But it wore away to thread. I still have the pieces in a box in my room.”
“There was a family of Dhonshon shopkeepers living in Palminera,” Leah said. “I became friends with them and they did me a huge favor one day. I loved their store. Everything in it was just like this—beautiful and brightly colored.”
“Dhonshon craftspeople make beautiful things,” Annova agreed. “My mother said they have to, to make up for all the wretchedness in their country.”
“I know the king is a terrible man,” Leah answered.
“Dhonsho has had a long succession of terrible kings, but the current one is among the worst,” Annova said. “But how would you know anything about him?”
“When Corene was living at the palace in Malinqua, she made friends with a princess from Dhonsho,” Leah answered. “Alette. The king’s daughter. It turned out he was planning to have her killed.”
Annova looked briefly sorrowful for a woman she’d never even met. “Then she must be dead by now.”
“I hope not,” Leah said quietly. “We helped her flee the country. It was all Corene’s idea, though I played a part as well. But I don’t know that Alette made it to safety even so.”
Now Annova looked intrigued. “Corene helped a Dhonshon princess escape? I don’t think I’ve heard this story. Does Zoe know it?”
“Maybe not. As you can imagine, we were eager to keep it a secret.”
“Where did she go?”
Leah laughed softly. “To Yorramol, or so we hope. I know she boarded a ship bound for there, because I put her on it. But there was a war going on, and I can’t be sure she slipped through the blockade.” She lifted her hands. “She promised to write Corene if she could. I hope one day a letter will arrive.”
“I don’t know anyone who’s been to Yorramol,” Annova said. “You hear people talk about it, and you think they must be lying.”
“That’s why we thought she might be safe there from her father’s vengeance,” Leah answered.
Annova smiled. “We will assume she arrived there unharmed. And that she will write. And then you can write her back and ask her to send you spices and fabrics and masks and music boxes and anything else they might sell in that strange place. And then you will have the most distinctive merchandise in all of Chialto!”
Leah laughed and indicated the piles of exotic goods arrayed all around them. “I think I already do.”
At the very bottom of the last box they unpacked, they found a thick sealed envelope bearing Leah’s name. Leah had been looking for something of the sort—a letter, a note of some kind, a personal acknowledgment amid all this welter of commerce—but Annova was the one who found it. She handed it over without comment. By its bulk, it contained multiple sheets of paper, and maybe something else besides. Leah could hardly wait to open it, but she wanted to be alone when she did.
Just in case. Just in case Chandran said something that made her smile, or made her blush, or made her sigh.
“Well! Let’s decide what stays down here and what goes upstairs,” Annova said when they had cleared out every last item from every last box. “And then—you’re ready, aren’t you? You could open your doors whenever you wanted.”
Leah nodded. “On secondday, I’m thinking,” she said. “A lot of the local shopkeepers stay closed on firstday, so I should, too.”
“Zoe wants to have a party for you—here in the shop,” said Annova. “She’ll invite her cousin Keeli and her aunt Saronne, and they can bring all their fashionable friends.”
“Although it’s the foreign visitors we want to attract, not the local buyers.”
Annova put her hands on her hips and looked around. “I think you’ll attract them all.”
• • •
Finally they had hauled all the boxes upstairs, swept up the detritus of unpacking, and declared themselves done for the day. Annova set off for the palace; Leah made her way home. She detoured through the Plaza of Women to pick up two meals at the inexpensive cantina where she’d taken Rhan—one for herself, one for the insatiable reifarjin. While she was there, she bought one of the more costly bottles of wine, though it was still ludicrously cheap. She would light candles and sip wine and read Chandran’s letter, and pretend she was having dinner with a friend.
She followed this excellent plan as soon as she made it home. It was full dark when she let herself into her room, so the candles were welcome. The fish practically leapt out of its bowl in its eagerness to feed, so she spent a long few minutes crumbling up a meat pie and dribbling the bits into the water. All the while, she felt the drag of the letter in her pocket. It seemed to carry heat as well as weight. Emotion as well as substance. She supposed that was her imagination.
Finally she sat at the little table by the window with her meal spread out before her, and she broke the seal on the envelope. Yes—several sheets of closely written paper and a slim packet holding—something. She lay the packet aside and began reading.
Leah,
I was so pleased to receive your first letter
s, telling me of your safe arrival in Welce and your early days there. Yes, I am sure it feels strange to be back in the city you once knew so well, and to find it has changed only a little while you have changed a lot. I have been gone from my own homeland much longer than five years and, while I find it difficult to imagine ever returning, I do sometimes wish I could walk down the streets of the capital city one more time and breathe in the scents I have never encountered anywhere else. If I ever learn that I am dying and have only a few ninedays to live, I will go back. I would like those spires and rooftops to be the last images my eyes ever see.
I am also pleased to hear that you will be opening a shop in what I remember you describing as the most elegant district of Chialto. You said once that if you ever returned to the city, you would like to run a business there; the fact that you can pursue this dream in partnership with your regent makes the plan even more agreeable. I know you like the notion that you are independent and require the help of no one, including Darien Serlast, but I think I know you better than that. You are independent, no question, but you do not like being unbounded. You do not like being without purpose. I do not know if you ever managed to be frivolous when you were younger, but it is something I think you lost the knack for long ago.
Finally, what pleases me the most is that you have turned to me to aid you in this enterprise. I miss you very much; being of some use to you now makes me feel that you are not so far away. And I flatter myself that I have just the right skills to enable you to succeed at your new venture. Thus, even though you are gone from my life, I am still in some small way a part of yours.
By now you will have unpacked the boxes and found all the items I have chosen for you, based upon your requirements and my own intuition. If there is anything you decide you do not like well enough to attempt to sell, return it to me and I will replace it with something of approximately the same value.
You mention that your regent is expecting visitors from the Karkades and you would like to lure some of these travelers to your shop, so I have included a number of items from that country. You were in luck, for the very day your letter arrived, I was visited by a trader carrying Karkan goods. The people of Malinqua tend to prefer items from Cozique, so I have never carried much Karkan merchandise, but I know enough about it to judge what is good quality and what is inferior. So I have made some purchases on your behalf.